Tuesday, March 30, 2010

ANYONE FEEL LIKE THIS YET?

The Long Rain by Ray Bradbury - A group of astronauts are stranded on Venus, where it rains continually and heavily. the travelers make their way across the Venusian landscape to find a "sun dome", a shelter with a large artificial light source. However, the first sun dome they find has been destroyed by the Venusians. Searching for another sun dome, the characters, one by one, are driven to madness and suicide by the unrelenting rhythm of the rain. At the end of the story, only one sane astronaut remains, and manages to find a functional sun dome.

I just went out, in the rain, to take pictures of everything getting ready to overflow. The above story was all I could think of while I was out. I was gone for about an hour and had my car to get in and out of as I moved along my route. Still, I can see why it would drive somebody to madness. IT IS UNRELENTING! With a rain jacket, wellies, and an umbrella I still got soaked!

I was amazed at just how much water there is out there. We live at the top of a pretty good hill, so we're not having any problems with it but there are people who live awfully close to the river and the lake and I would not be surprised if they were all experiencing some kind of flooding.Our street is horseshoe-shaped and the Whittenton River runs along it and then passes under it. At one end of the street is Sabbatia Lake which is fairly large and constantly moving, it pinches down to about 20 feet across and goes under a bridge to dump into the Whittenton. As you can see, it's really moving, and those concrete blocks you see just before the water is breaking are usually above the water.

This is the view from the other side of the bridge. Usually we can get down onto those rocks, but the water is so high and moving so fast, I didn't dare take a chance.Further on down the river is the dam that was getting so much press a couple of years ago. This is what it looks like today. Coming fast and furious and LOUD!On the upside, I did notice that there are a lot of buds on the trees!Then a little further on down the river, near the Reed & Barton factory, there's another fall. In this picture you can see just how hard it's raining too(click on the picture to enlarge).

And if you've never read that story by Bradbury, it comes from a book of short stories called The Illustrated Man. I highly recommend it.